Teck Cominco sued for $88 million in Alaskan ecological mess

PATRICIA D’SOUZA

The owner of the Polaris lead and zinc mine north of Resolute Bay is being sued for a host of environmental violations at its Red Dog lead and zinc mine in northern Alaska.

The Inupiat village of Kivalina (population 377) launched the lawsuit in July 2002, alleging Teck Cominco Ltd. has almost continuously violated the conditions of its permit under the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (the regulatory equivalent of the Nunavut Water Board) since it was issued in 1998.

If the lawsuit is successful, the Vancouver-based company could be asked to pay up to US$88 million in fines, US$27,500 for each of the 3,200 violations.

“The mine regularly exceeds permit limits for discharges of cyanide into Red Dog Creek, which flows into the Wulik River, the primary source of drinking water for Kivalina,” the Kivalina Relocation Planning Committe said in a press release.

The discharge has affected the taste of the water and leaves a dirty chalk residue on pots and pans, said Kivalina resident Enoch Adams. In addition, fishermen have noticed deformities in the dollie varden trout that is a staple for the community.

“One young man saw a fish swimming toward him,” Adams recalls. “He noticed that from halfway to the tail it was bare bone — and it was swimming. That’s what really startled him — that it should have been dead, but it was swimming.”

Teck Cominco admits it has exceeded the discharge allowed by its permit, but adds that a “compliance order by consent,” as special deal struck with the EPA, gives it permission to do so.

Doug Horswill, senior vice-president of environment and corporate affairs for Teck Cominco, said the chalky water could be caused by problems with the community’s water treatment system or a natural sulphur deposit upstream.

“We don’t think it has to do with the mine,” he said.

In fact, Horswill said, Red Dog Creek is actually cleaner now than it was before mining began in 1989. In its natural state, the river was running virtually red as a result of mineralization and oxidization. That created conditions so acidic that fish couldn’t live there.

No Red Dog at Polaris?

The lawsuit, which heads to court for pre-trial motions next year, is of particular interest to Nunavummiut as Polaris mine enters the reclamation phase.

Representatives for the company and the Government of Nunavut are using the project as an example of successful mining in the territory.

“I’d like to have Polaris be the poster project for temporary use of the land,” said Gordon MacKay, director of minerals, oil and gas for the department of sustainable development.

But the fly-in, fly-out operation on the otherwise uninhabited Little Cornwallis Island contributed little to the people of Nunavut besides taxes paid to Ottawa. It will almost certainly employ more Inuit in its brief clean-up phase than it did in its 20 years of operation.

And despite the roughly 20 million tonnes of mining discharge that have been dumped into the island’s Garrow Lake, company officials say they’re certain Polaris won’t become another Red Dog.

For one thing, the lake doesn’t open onto any other body of water. For another, not much can live in its dense, salty bottom layer — where the tailings have been deposited.

“Garrow Lake would not sustain much life in the first place,” said Horswill. “Whatever life it could sustain originally, it can sustain now.”

However, a thriving population of sculpin and clams live on the shores on the lake, in the brakish waters of its top layer, and it’s unclear how the lead, zinc and iron concentrates in the tailings will affect them.

Teck Cominco has committed to a sculpin study this summer at the request of the department of fisheries and oceans. But if the study were to show any adverse effects — like the boney fish Adams spoke of in Alaska — the company doesn’t know what it would do.

“I can’t say what our plans would be. Further study would be required,” said Walter Kuit, director of environmental affairs for Teck Cominco.

The company also has no plans to test the birds and bears that prey on the Garrow Lake sculpins.

Reclamation began shortly after the mine ceased operation this past August. The work is expected to be completed by the spring of 2004, with additional monitoring extending until 2011.